The Scandalous Cross (Newsletter)

Dear Friends,

       On the last Sunday of February—in the 24^th year of the 21^st century—the sermon had to do with the symbolism of the cross. For 1^st-century Jews in Jerusalem, the cross represented everything evil and authoritarian in the world. And for good reason. Rome used the cross as an instrument of public torture and execution. The cross was Power’s exceptionally ruthless means of shocking and even panicking subjects into compliance with both laws and Power’s status quo. And it had its effect—but as with all violence, only in the short run. When Jesus showed up, and was accused of claiming to be the king of the Jews, few Romans would have thought twice about crucifying him.

       You know the story—most of it, anyway. Since Power continues to use brutality and bullying to achieve political and economic ends, the story is far from over.

If you are reading this congregational newsletter, you probably trust that the mystery of the resurrection is as real as the fact of crucifixion. No doubt you also are familiar with the cross as an unmistakable symbol of our faith tradition. Is the cross still, as the apostle Paul wrote, a “scandal” to us, though? In that February sermon, we acknowledged that the cross has been, for many, sanitized into little more than a popular piece of jewelry. And in January of 2021, during a violent attack on our own nation, a tall, white cross was militarized by being paraded around the US capitol as if to say that Jesus blessed the idolatrous violence.

       In February 2001, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt died when his car hit the wall on the last lap of the Daytona 500. I was living in Mebane, NC at that time, and a day or two after Earnhardt’s death, a local newspaper published a front-page, close-up photograph of items left outside the Richard Childress Racing headquarters. Nestled in among all the flowers, letters, NASCAR hats, mirrored sunglasses, and photographs of “The Intimidator’s” familiar, black #3 Chevrolet lay a white, wooden cross. Painted on the cross, in large, black letters were the words, “IN DALE WE TRUST.”

       Like the use of crucifixion as a means of crowd control, those words on that cross were an obscenity.

Now, of course, Dale Earnhardt’s death was horrific tragedy for him, his family, and for racing itself, but neither his life nor his death has divine redemptive power. He will not and cannot be trusted to restore broken relationships with God and one another. NASCAR fans may find this reflection a bit dramatic, but I think that that de-scandalized cross represents a deep and destructive offense in the suggestion that the unfortunate and untimely death of a sporting icon compares in any way to that of Jesus, the Christ.

       As Lent continues and Easter approaches, I encourage us all to look deeply at ourselves. How and where might we forsake Jesus for more immediate, gratifying, and less scandalous lords? Then, through humility and repentance, let’s prepare ourselves to celebrate and receive God’s trustworthy salvation as it comes to us in the gracious life, the scandalous death, and the death-defeating power of resurrection.

 

Peace,

       Pastor Allen

Only One Cross (Sermon)

“Only One Cross”

Psalm 22:23-31 and Mark 8:31-38

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

2/25/24

 

²³ You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him;
    stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
²⁴ For he did not despise or abhor
    the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me
    but heard when I cried to him.

²⁵ From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
    my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
²⁶ The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek him shall praise the Lord.
    May your hearts live forever!

²⁷ All the ends of the earth shall remember
    and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
    shall worship before him.
²⁸ For dominion belongs to the Lord,
    and he rules over the nations.

²⁹ To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
    before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
    and I shall live for him.
³⁰ Posterity will serve him;
    future generations will be told about the Lord
³¹ and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
    saying that he has done it. (NRSV)

 

³¹ Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. ³² He said all this quite openly.

And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

³³ But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

³⁴ He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. ³⁶ For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷ Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸ Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (NRSV)

 

         The well-known and beloved preacher and teacher Fred Craddock once quoted another popular preacher who had said that preachers can’t “be successful preaching the cross of Jesus. It is not a message people want to hear,” the man said. “They already have too many problems of their own.”

         With tongue in cheek, Craddock said, “It’s no wonder [that guy] is popular.”

         Paul would agree. In fact, Craddock’s jab comes as a fruit of his own reading of Paul who calls the cross “foolishness,” and “a stumbling block.” (1Corinthians 1:18, 23)

         Is that still true for us? Let’s be honest; our culture has, for the most part, domesticated the cross. For many, it’s just a fashionable trinket to be worn on a necklace. But the cross of Jesus is not jewelry. Like Paul says, it’s a scandal. It’s something to be borne, not worn. For people in the sphere of first century Rome, wearing a cross around one’s neck would be like someone today wearing an electric chair pendant.

The cross calls all Christian believers to remember who they are and what it costs to follow one particular convict who died on one of countless thousands of Roman crosses.  

         In today’s reading, Jesus warns his disciples that he will soon die, because a life of faithfulness to God has profound consequences. Peter will hear none of this. He still believes that Jesus will lead Israel in the apocalyptic battle in which they will defeat Rome, once and for all. Imagine his dismay when he declares his faith and his loyalty only to hear Jesus turn on him saying, “Get behind me, Satan! [Y]ou are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

         Then, an impassioned Jesus gathers the crowd and says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

         This unnerving challenge does far more than rebuke and remediate Peter with a dose tough love. Peter’s challenge returns Jesus to the wilderness. In Peter’s defiance, Jesus faces anew the temptation to dominate—to achieve victory through bloodshed. While the nations might love leaders who incite violence and preach nationalistic fanaticism, such means are simply not alternatives for the Christ and his followers.

         I think Mark wants us to read Jesus’ unsettling words as his own steadfast refusal to give in to worldly fears and means. Jesus declares his unwavering commitment to the path of holiness, compassion, and peace.

         When we’re tempted to trust human ways and means, Jesus calls us to take up our own crosses and follow him. He invites us to join him in beating the sword of the cross into the plowshare of resurrection grace.

         Our crosses may be revealed in many ways, but there are not many different little crosses for us to bear. When all is said and done, there’s only one cross, because we have moved into the realm of metaphor. Our cross is itself the life of faithfulness to the counter-cultural Christ. Our cross is the path of discipleship. 

         So, our cross calls us to the JAMA food pantry, to Family Promise, into the lives of offenders at the Day Reporting Center. It sends us to advocate for people who are ignored and oppressed. It takes us into the lives of neighbors who grieve, who are sick and lonely. It leads us into prayer and study where, through honest reflection, we become vulnerable so that we might be strengthened. Because the cross also calls us to cease our striving for a day, it has brought us into this sanctuary.

         In Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, there’s a powerful little scene in which Sophia says to Celie: “Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for God to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.”

         When we come to worship as willing to share God with others as to seek God for ourselves, God shows up. And in that gathering, where we share stories and support, we begin to understand what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

         Jesus took up his cross long before the chief priests and the scribes coerced Pilate to execute him on a pair of rough, wooden beams. Jesus’ own cross was and continues to be our need borne of our brokenness. And because Jesus comes not to condemn…but to redeem, he never abandons us to our self-inflicted sufferings. Indeed, his prayer from his cross is for us: Father, forgive them!

         Years ago, I read an article about a then-young, African-American attorney in Alabama named Bryan Stevenson. The first sentence of the article was a set up. “For nearly fifteen years,” it said, “his conviction has kept him on death row.”

         Mr. Stevenson’s conviction was not for some violent, capitol offense. His conviction was that “no one is beyond hope…[or] redemption.” He believes that God called him “to be a witness for hope, [and] for justice” by working with death row inmates to overturn execution verdicts in a state in which, at that time, the average capitol case lasted about three days.

         Bryan Stevenson founded and is still active in the Equal Justice Initiative. And he knows that most of the men with whom he works are guilty. He also knows that just because the state gives up on them doesn’t mean that God does. Stevenson discovered that for almost every man on Alabama’s death row, their crimes mark the brutal culmination of their own experiences of relentless abuse and suffering. He doesn’t try to excuse their actions or to put dangerously damaged people back on the streets. Nonetheless, following Jesus, he says, “[We] we are all more than our worst act.”

         Stevenson goes where the cross has been left lying on the ground. Taking up that cross, he follows Jesus into what has become the chaotic and destructively violent pain of others.

         “There are times when we get overwhelmed and discouraged…,” he says, “but I have learned that God’s grace is sufficient…[And] I feel really privileged to see…extraordinary…acts of grace, acts of love, acts of redemption, that I wish the whole world could see.”

         The Lenten journey of shouldering Jesus’ cross guides us to our own death row. It sends us to Friday where we take up our cross and die with Christ. On that journey, we do experience discouragement and pain, because it is, so often, into the discouragement and pain of the world that God leads us. And all along the way, we will be privileged to witness “extraordinary…acts of grace…love…[and] redemption.”

         As disciples, we follow and share Christ. We involve ourselves in the blessed things that God is doing in our midst. And through our faithfulness to the journey of Jesus’ cross, there will be many people, ourselves included, who will catch a glimpse of the ever-unfolding miracle of Resurrection.

Into the Wilderness (Sermon)

 “Into the Wilderness”

Psalm 106:1, 6-14b

Mark 1:9-15

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

2/18/24

 

¹Praise the Lord!
    O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
    for his steadfast love endures forever.

⁶ Both we and our ancestors have sinned;
    we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.
⁷ Our ancestors, when they were in Egypt,
    did not consider your wonderful works;
they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love
    but rebelled against the Most High at the Red Sea.
⁸ Yet he saved them for his name’s sake,
    so that he might make known his mighty power.
⁹ He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry;
    he led them through the deep as through a desert.
¹⁰ So he saved them from the hand of the foe
    and delivered them from the hand of the enemy.
¹¹ The waters covered their adversaries;
    not one of them was left.
¹² Then they believed his words;
    they sang his praise.

¹³ But they soon forgot his works;
    they did not wait for his counsel.
¹⁴ But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness
    and put God to the test in the desert.  (NRSV)

 

⁹ In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰ And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him.¹¹ And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

¹² And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³ He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.

¹⁴ Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God ¹⁵ and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  (NRSV)

 

         “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.”

         As a metaphor, wilderness compares with mountains and seas, light and darkness. It evokes wonder, awe, and even fear. And as creatures made in God’s image, while there’s always something holy and bright about us, there’s also something wild and feral within us. Wilderness speaks to both aspects of this image.

         John the Baptist crawls out of the wilderness like some sort of primordial life form. His prophetic passion is the gift of his intimate connection to the holy wildness that is God. And John comes not to tame and control the wilderness around and within all things, but to prepare the way for God’s Christ within it.

         When Jesus arrives, he receives John’s baptism. And when he rises from the water, he sees the heavens crack open above him.

         You! says a voice, you are my beloved son.

         Then, using the same verb he uses to describe Jesus casting out demons, Mark says that the Spirit “drove [Jesus] out” into the wilderness. So, after his baptism, Jesus gets cast out. He gets exorcised, by the Spirit, into the wilderness where his companions are wild beasts, angels, and his own swirling thoughts.

         If you’ve ever spent time in some remote place, especially alone, you may have experienced how quickly your own civilized mind can become as wild and terrifying as the beasts you’re afraid to encounter. But remember, we’re using wilderness as a descriptive metaphor. So, it doesn’t have to be a forest, or a desert, or a swamp. The boundary of spiritual wilderness lies along that ever-shifting line between who we are and who we’re becoming in God.

         For forty days, Jesus consciously walks that line, discovering what is true for all of us: His life is not his own. Within him there stirs a wildness that surpasses even that of his locust-eating, thunder-voiced cousin John. Jesus’ wildness is the life and death kind. It is resurrection wildness.

          When God reveals this inherent wildness to Jesus at his baptism, a door to unprecedented possibility opens. He may be Joseph and Mary’s boy, but things lie at his fingertips that the greatest prophets and kings never knew. Out in his wilderness, Jesus realizes that he’s a man on whom God has laid a sanctifying call, a call that demands exceptional holiness. And God has given him remarkable gifts with which to be faithful to that calling. Uniquely called and empowered, what will he do?

         Mark’s quick, two-verse account of Jesus’ temptation seems rather anticlimactic. Still, wandering in the wilderness “with the wild beasts” while being “waited on” by angels is a compelling image of the human soul in conflict with itself.

         For Jesus, wilderness is that conflicted place where he stands utterly vulnerable to the temptation to use his extraordinary gifts for selfish gain. Luke and Matthew include specific details for something only Jesus experiences, while Mark just lays the issue before us in all its metaphorical starkness. Like all of us, Jesus wrestles with his own inner beasts and angels, his own light and darkness.

Yes, I said darkness. If Jesus didn’t face the real possibility of using his gifts for selfish gain, what good is it to say that he was tempted?

         Docetism is an old, old heresy, but it remains alive and well. In an effort to protect Jesus from the taint of human weakness, docetism claims that Jesus only appeared human. Docetists get no support from Mark, though. Even in his fleeting account of Jesus temptation, Mark reveals a man bound up in the kind of tortured struggle that all humans deal with.

We all wrestle with temptation. We’re never completely free of the spiritual tug-of-war going on between the wild beasts and the attending angels within us. Writing to the Romans, Paul pens one of the most memorable expressions of that struggle saying, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want…but the evil I do not want is what I do.” That’s not quibbling. That’s the language of honest, deep-wilderness struggle.

         We all have characteristics that we cherish. And we all have parts of ourselves that we keep hidden—things about us that we’re ashamed of, or were told to be ashamed of, and things that we find contrary to the self we want to project. Our hearts know these things about ourselves even when our minds deny and repress them. Because of that struggle, when we recognize our dark tendencies in others, we tend to despise those folks. We pile our self-loathing onto those we label as beasts, while we claim to be angels.

         If you want to see this in action, just watch a race for political office. The whole right/wrong, good/bad rhetoric is pure wilderness wrangling. Whether in a government, a business, a church, or a family, every personal attack, every demonizing power play, becomes, in some way, an outward expression of the spiritual struggle going on inside us. To become conscious of that struggle, and to live in that new consciousness, is to discover wisdom and clarity. It is to be healed of our fear.

         In the synoptic gospels, Jesus leaves the wilderness and jumps immediately and fearlessly into his counter-cultural, Caesar-defying ministry. He lives a life that will get him killed.

         In John’s gospel, there’s no temptation-in-the-wilderness scene, but Jesus does square off with his mama. At the wedding at Cana, Mary challenges her son to claim his gifts and to spare the oblivious host a bitter embarrassment, and the chief steward a punishment that is, potentially, even more bitter.

Tempted to remain safe and anonymous, Jesus tries to put her off, but Mamawon’t have it.

“Do whatever he tells you,” Mary says to the servants.

Following the revelatory water-to-wine event in Cana, Jesus goes straight to Jerusalem and clears moneychangers from the temple with a whip—another prophetic act he cannot undo, and which neither the powerful nor the penniless can forget.

Through temptation, we can come to understand ourselves more deeply. The temptations that really matter put us face-to-face with our most debilitating fears and our most transcendent gifts. Overcoming temptation means repenting from greed and committing our gifts to the well-being of all rather than to selfish gain. And by definition, selfish gain always comes, in some way, at the expense of others.

Old Ebenezer Scrooge epitomizes the man of selfish gain. And not only do his miserly ways make life hard for Bob Cratchit and his family, even Scrooge himself lives a meager existence, so obsessed is he with getting, having, and controlling. Not until the wilderness experience of his Christmas dreams does he confront the full weight of the suffering he causes to others and to himself. And only when he recognizes both himself and his wealth as gifts to be shared, does he repent into a life of joyful witness to the at-hand realm of God.

God’s realm of grace is present. At hand. Within and among us. You are uniquely gifted for grateful and joyful witness.

What will you do?

Feverish Living and Sabbath Rest (Sermon)

 “Feverish Living and Sabbath Rest”

Isaiah 40:21-31 and Mark 1:29-39

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

2/4/24

 

Isaiah 40:21-31

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
    Has it not been told you from the beginning?
    Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
²² It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
    and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain
    and spreads them like a tent to live in,
²³ who brings princes to naught
    and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

²⁴ Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
    scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and they wither,
    and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

²⁵ To whom, then, will you compare me,
    or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
²⁶ Lift up your eyes on high and see:
    Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
    calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
    mighty in power,
    not one is missing.

²⁷ Why do you say, O Jacob,
    and assert, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
    and my right is disregarded by my God”?
²⁸ Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
²⁹ He gives power to the faint
    and strengthens the powerless.
³⁰ Even youths will faint and be weary,
    and the young will fall exhausted,
³¹ but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint. (NRSV)

 

Mark 1:29-39

²⁹ As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.³⁰ Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. ³¹ He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

³² That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. ³³ And the whole city was gathered around the door. ³⁴ And he cured many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

³⁵ In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.³⁶ And Simon and his companions hunted for him. ³⁷ When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” ³⁸ He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” ³⁹ And he went throughout all Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. (NRSV)

 

         I wonder if the first-century writer of Mark wouldn’t have felt somewhat at home in the feverish pace of life of the twenty-first century. As we noted last week, in Mark’s telling of Jesus’ story, much of the action happens “immediately.” In the first chapter, “the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.” (Mark 1:12) That urgency continues all the way through the gospel to the first verse of chapter 15 when, “As soon as it was morning,” Jesus is arrested and handed over to Pilate. In the Greek, “As soon as” is the same word elsewhere translated as “immediately.” After that, in less than a day, Jesus is dead and buried.

         Today’s passage begins with that same immediacy. “As soon as [Jesus and the disciples] left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew.” And at once they tell Jesus that Simon’s mother-in-law is bedridden with a fever.

Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, and afterward she hurries back to work in the kitchen.

By sundown, the end of that sabbath day, a crowd stands at the door, pressing Jesus for healing or to watch healings happen. Jesus tends to as many as he can until everyone finally goes home.

Feverishness hounds Jesus everywhere he goes, doesn’t it?

Now, to some of you, all this begins to sound rather cliché, but maybe some things become cliché because we need to face them over and over.

         Who among us hasn’t experienced the feverishness of life? In our culture, busyness has become a badge of honor. “How are you doing?” someone asks. And most of the time we either say, “Fine,” or we declare that we’re too busy to know what day it is. It seems to me, that even more of the time, all we want to hear from others is that they’re either fine or busy. We’re so caught up in our own fevered lives that we seldom have the physical stillness and the spiritual peace required to listen to and care for one another.

Even young people feel this feverishness. At what age do we start them in organized sports requiring daily practices, and weekend-long tournaments in far-away towns?

The sad paradox is that while many folks try to use busyness to validate their lives, the cost of feverish living is life itself. Frenetic existence is about achieving and acquiring rather than growing and sharing. It numbs us to people we claim to love and to the systemic inequities and iniquities that destroy human community.

Now, here’s the redeeming twist. In today’s story, Jesus rises before the sun and slips away by himself. He escapes to a secluded place to pray. After sunrise, the disciples launch a desperate search for Jesus. When they finally find him, they say, “Everyone is searching for you.” Translation: Let’s go, Jesus! We gotta get busy!

Jesus doesn’t disagree, but he does redirect. Yeah, we’ll get moving, he says. But I have other places to go, and other people to see.

While Jesus experiences his own feverish pace of life, he handles it differently. All along the way he prepares for that busyness. He prepares by entering, repeatedly, the relationship-restoring peace of solitude, and the invigorating stillness of prayer.

I think that Jesus pulling away from the people who need him is the very point of today’s story. Precisely because of his disciplined retreat from the relentless demands, Jesus is able to fulfill his calling as the Christ. In yet another paradox, Jesus regularly avoids people as the only way truly to be with them and to lovethem.

Years ago, I read that the reformer Martin Luther said that the busier his life got the more time he had to commit to the renewing peace of contemplation. As one who kept on the move in order to avoid arrest and execution for heresy, Luther lived a terribly feverish life, and he couldn’t study, write, preach, travel, and thrive if he didn’t carve out ample time simply to sit in the presence of God.

Folks like me are usually expected to set good examples of faithfulness in prayer. And while I may be well-practiced at cluttering up silences with words, and calling that prayer, I struggle as much as anyone with physical stillness and spiritual peace. I struggle to make adequate time for the kind of contemplation and prayer that causes fevers to break, wounds to heal, and that opens our eyes to the Spirited holiness at work creating and uniting all things in love.

While such a confession is no excuse, it can be a starting place. If we claim to be the body of Christ, doesn’t it make sense, that, to prepare ourselves for Christian mission, we, too, would regularly pull away from the world? For us as a community, that means more than simply shutting ourselves up in worship one hour a week. It means making time to lay everything else aside so we can sit together in receptive silence.

There’s a story told about Mother Teresa answering a question about her prayer practice. When asked about her discipline, Mother Teresa said, “I sit there in God’s presence and just listen.” 

“What does God say,” said the interviewer.

Without any hint of guile, Mother Teresa said, “God just listens.”³

We’re talking now about creating sabbath time—time to gather in community to hit a collective off switch and surrender to the embrace of Spirit. And in that embrace, we simply feel and listen. Through sabbath time we place ourselves in the hands of God who heals our fevers, and deepens our capacity for giving and receiving love. And real sabbath takes practice.

Well known for honoring silence in both individual and corporate worship, Quakers seem to have learned this better than many other Christian groups. The hymn “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” is an adaptation of the poem “The Brewing of Soma” by the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier.¹ The story behind the poem is quite interesting, but for our purposes, it’s enough to recognize that this hymn invites us into sabbath.

So, instead of filling more time with my words, we’re going to sing this hymn together. As we sing, I invite you to contemplate God’s healing and comforting presence in sabbath stillness and peace.

Benediction:

 

When I Am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

 

When I am among the trees, 
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines, 
they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment, 
and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often. 

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you, too, have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”²

 

¹https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-dear-lord-and-father-of-mankind

² I heard this story from a friend, and couldn’t find confirmation of it as told. The following quotation is close and may actually be the source of the story as it came to me. “God speaks in the silence of the heart, and we listen. And then we speak to God from the fullness of our heart, and God listens. And this listening and this speaking is what prayer is meant to be…” From: The Best Gift is Love: Meditations (ed. Servant Books, 1993) - ISBN: 9780892838141

³“When I Am Among the Trees,” by Mary Oliver. Published in Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, Boston, 2006. Pg. 4.